Runcert

My 5K is on Saturday. Yesterday I ran for 20 minutes without walking, so I'm feeling pretty good about the 5K. Granted, I was moving pretty slowly and bet I only did like a mile and a half, but whatever - it was a good pace and I felt like I could have kept going. The event is called a "runcert" - run + concert. I like it.

I've been doing my second grade NEAT class for the past two weeks, and some of my students were also in my winter English camp. I love the second grade NEAT students, possibly even more than the third grade. This is probably because the second graders are much more animated. The boys in particular - I kind of want to adopt some of them. On the other end of the spectrum, I was really dragging today. The first graders are just so poorly behaved. They never want to be quiet or pay attention, and I've tried so many approaches - carrot, stick, punishment, cajoling, joking, threatening... they all only work temporarily. It's exhausting. Because I've been punishing late students with lunchtime writing assignments, my lunchtime has cut down to about 15 minutes a day. I'm usually late to lunch because of disciplining students who were misbehaving in class, and then I eat my lunch in about 10 minutes, then fill up my water bottle and go to various classrooms to hunt down the homework students because they either forget to come to the English classroom or just blow it off. I've even tried sending their homeroom teachers messages to send the students to my classroom, but either the teachers forget or the kids just don't go. I've found the best way is just to personally track them down then lead them to the classroom. Today I brought two first grade girls in, and while I was setting up the movie to show the rest of the kids, she slipped out after only completing about a fifth of the assignment. Because I have to supervise the lunchtime movies, I couldn't exactly start running around my five story school searching for a student. The upside is that I've noticed a definite trend in the students that I force to do their homework. It has really cut down on their tardiness.

I've also started a teachers' English conversation club. We had our first meeting on Wednesday. It's supposed to be six female teachers and one male teacher, but we only had four show up. One is the aforementioned hanja teacher, who is actually quite a nice guy, just a bit on the odd side. I still haven't read that book he gave me, which I should because I should really return it. I just don't feel like reading it though. The teachers' class was good though.

Today was the first day I didn't wear a jacket to school.

It's been one month and four days since I've twisted my hair. Does my hair look any different? Sadly, I don't think so.